than themselves, then even His wife was put aside; then the test of the fire for Sîtâ, the unsullied and the suffering; then She must pass through it to show that no sin or pollution had come upon Her by the foul touch of Râvana, the Râkshasa; then the demand that ere husband's heart that had been riven might again clasp the wife, She must come forth pure as woman; and all this, because He was king as well as husband, and on the throne the people honoured as divine there must only be purity, spotless as driven snow. Those limitations were needed in order that a perfect example might be given to man, and man might learn to climb by reproducing virtues, made small in order that his small grasp might hold them. We come to the second great class of manifestations, that to which I alluded in the beginning as covered by the wide term A´vesha. In that case it is not that a man in past universes has climbed upward and has become one with I´shvara; but it is that a man has climbed so far as to become so great, so perfect in his manhood, and so full of love and devotion to God and man, that God is able to permeate him with a portion of His own influence, His own power, His own knowledge, and send him forth into the world as a superhuman manifestation of Himself. The individual Ego remains; that is the great distinction. The _man_ is there, though the power that is acting is the manifested God. Therefore the manifestation will be coloured by the special characteristics of the one over whom this overshadowing is made; and you will be able to trace in the thoughts of this inspired teacher, the characteristics of the race, of the individual, of the form of knowledge which belongs to that man in the incarnation in which the great overshadowing takes place. That is the fundamental difference.